


Above and Under All Possible Worlds

by pineapplecrushface



Series: After Derry [6]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Engagement, M/M, Richie's tank top that is definitely cursed, Wedding Rings, Weddings, turtle magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:09:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23024548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pineapplecrushface/pseuds/pineapplecrushface
Summary: An engagement, an engagement, a wedding, and a ring.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: After Derry [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1513157
Comments: 38
Kudos: 661





	Above and Under All Possible Worlds

**Author's Note:**

> This is for [royal_chandler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/royal_chandler/pseuds/royal_chandler), who gave me such a lovely prompt.
> 
> The title is taken from the e.e. cummings poem ["The Great Advantage of Being Alive."](http://plagiarist.com/poetry/9240/)
> 
> Also, anyone who's ever read The Blue Castle, one of my favorite books of all time, might see a little tribute in this fic somewhere.

Early in August, Eddie woke up to 116 new messages in the group text. The last message was from Richie: _so you can fucking SUCK IT_ , _denbrough_ , followed by four lipstick emojis. It was not illuminating at all.

“Rich,” he said, rolling over and curling up to his warm body, waiting for Richie’s arms to slide around him. “Did something happen last night?”

“Bill said I have to get a haircut,” Richie mumbled. “Ben and Bev got engaged.”

“Nice,” he said. “You should have woken me up.”

“Really?” Richie turned so he could fully wrap around Eddie, which was simultaneously annoying because he was so big and wonderful because he was so big.

“No,” he said. “I might pretend like I wanted it though. Like, _congratulations,_ _oh no, too bad Richie didn’t wake me up for the excitement_.”

“Say it just like that,” Richie said. “Totally insincere and sort of threatening.”

“I love them. I’m happy for them. I do _not_ need a hundred messages of it.”

“Most of that was the two of them explaining why they want to have the wedding in Derry,” Richie said.

Eddie stiffened, fully awake, his arms and legs prickling with goose bumps. “What the fuck.”

“I know. I expected him to book the top of the Eiffel Tower or some shit while a helicopter rains rose petals down onto them,” Richie said. “Clearly there were more layers of sentimental bullshit that I didn’t anticipate.”

“Did you say _yes_?” Eddie asked. His lungs were starting to feel tight, like he was wearing a corset and someone was slowly cinching it.

“No,” Richie said. “I said we needed to talk to him about it, so we’re Skyping after you get home from work. Then Bill said I would finally have to get a professional to do my hair instead of cutting it myself with Playskool scissors.”

“Fuck him. I like your hair,” Eddie said. It was true. He liked it when it was kind of short, as it was currently, and kind of long, the way it had been when they were in Derry the last time, and everything in between. If he ever grew facial hair again Eddie would not be responsible for his actions, but that was for charity and he supposed that was more important than the deep revulsion and horror he felt upon realizing he sort of wanted Richie to keep the handlebar mustache. 

That evening, Richie already had his laptop open at his desk in the living area when Eddie got home from work. Ben was in the Skype window, in his office, with the dog sleeping behind him in a chewed up dog bed.

“Hi, Eddie,” he said warily.

“Ben,” Eddie said. “What the fuck.”

“Haystack, man,” Richie said. “We’re really, really, really happy for you and can’t fucking wait to Cha-Cha Now Y’all and make out with the other bridesmaids, but we’re having some misgivings.”

“I get it, but hopefully I can explain,” Ben said.

“Yeah, dude,” Eddie said. “The four of us already got ordained like a month ago so we can do this thing. Don’t make me regret that twenty minutes of my life.”

“Okay, all right,” Ben said, laughing and putting his hands up. “It started because I kind of…bought my old house.”

“Oh, so just a vacation home,” Richie said. “In Derry. That’s cool and normal.”

“I don’t know why I did it,” Ben said. “It felt right. I wasn’t even thinking about getting married—well, a little—but I had this urge to look for my old house, and what do you know? It went up for sale the week before.”

“Are you trying to convince us?” Richie asked. “Because what you’re doing is making me want to move even farther away from Maine.”

Eddie shivered. “And it still does not explain why you’re dragging us back to the scene of our literal nightmares.”

“I thought about all the places we could go—or even just stay right here—but you know, that’s where we began. Everything felt surface level, like we weren’t getting to the root of…not just of us as a couple, but us as _people_. It’s not like we wouldn’t really be married, of course we’d be married, but we found each other in the middle of a nightmare and I want to make it not a nightmare anymore, for all of us.” Ben hunched his shoulders and looked up at them through his lashes. What a fucking asshole, Eddie thought. Being hot and fucking sincere so they wouldn’t fight back.

“Jesus Christ,” Richie muttered. “I knew I should have just fucking texted you.”

“I renovated my old house so we can stay there, if you want,” he added. “Or we can stay outside of town, too, and just go into the Barrens for the ceremony. I wouldn’t make you actually spend a night there, if you don’t want to.”

“Did you renovate the Barrens too, or do we get to stand around freezing our balls off and hoping no psychotic clowns show up looking to feast on frozen old man testicles?” Richie asked, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and crossing his arms with an annoyed little sigh.

Ben grinned, almost certainly recognizing that Richie was giving in. He always did, the fucking marshmallow. “You won’t freeze your balls off. I’ve got some plans.”

Richie huffed. “Well, like what?”

“Rich, stop fraternizing with the enemy, you dickhead,” Eddie said. “We don’t want to relive our trauma again, dude.”

“He’s right,” Richie said, pointing at him. “We don’t.”

“I don’t either,” Ben said. “I want to get closure on it and have something wonderful happen there, for once.”

Eddie closed his eyes and thought about Derry—shame, numbing fear, the leper and Bowers and his mother, the taste of his medicine and the smell of the hospital and the one light at the drugstore that flickered and it almost seemed like Mr. Keene liked it that way because he smiled when Eddie’s eyes watered—but also summer, swimming, stickers and smashing cap gun rolls with rocks and setting up tents in Bill’s back yard before Georgie disappeared and playing Explorers down by the train tracks for Richie’s birthday, which always coincided with the one week of March where the weather was deceptively beautiful and all the snow melted, reading comics in the clubhouse with Bev, jumping on the back of Silver and shrieking with equal amounts outrage and laughter when Richie would catch up to Bill and pretend to push him off. There was so much there, so much he had loved and forgotten and then remembered, all pushed underneath the blanket of terror and shock and denial and stunned sadness he had thrown over it the last time he had been there.

“All right,” he said, opening his eyes. “But if I get one fucking blister, Ben.”

“Say the word and we’ll go somewhere else. I swear it,” Ben said, like he knew Eddie was really saying _if I see one fucking sign of that clown, if I try to hold my boyfriend’s hand and he freaks out, if anyone fucking looks at us sideways_.

“When is this going down, anyway?” Richie asked.

“January,” Ben said, and Eddie reached over and slammed the laptop shut while Richie threw his hands in the air and shouted, “What! The actual! Fuck!”

*

The wedding invitation, which arrived in a heavy black envelope with their names written in white script and sealed with a red wax stamp, invited the two of them to The Barrens, Derry, Maine, 04012, at 2:00pm on January 18, 2019.

Against all reason, Richie was an excellent travel companion. Nothing fazed him, he always knew where the good coffee was, he liked to people watch and tell stories about them under his breath to make Eddie laugh, he didn’t mind when Eddie put on his headphones and zoned out, and he was a great pillow. Still, no amount of comfort could counteract his sweaty palms and racing heart when they landed in Bangor. He was able to ignore it right up until they passed the Derry Welcomes You sign, and then Richie pulled over abruptly just before their exit, said, “Hold on,” opened the car door, and threw up.

“We love them and we want to be part of their wedding,” Eddie mumbled to himself, rubbing Richie’s back while he rinsed his mouth out.

Richie leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes and panting. “Ben’s right,” he said eventually. “We shouldn’t have to be afraid of this shit forever. It’s worse in the winter for some reason.”

“It’s uglier,” Eddie agreed.

“I always liked walking in the woods in the winter, and that field behind the Barrens,” Richie said. “Remember how we used to take Bill’s dad’s snowmobile out and attach sleds to it?”

“Oh yeah.” Eddie clutched Richie’s arm. “You made a little snow ramp and Stan got mad, but we went flying. That was amazing.”

“It was the best day,” Richie said, opening his eyes and turning his head to smile at Eddie. “You sat in front of me on the snowmobile and you were so fucking cute and happy.”

“Gross,” Eddie said, grinning. Richie turned off the emergency lights that Eddie had slapped on when he pulled over, and slid the rental car back onto the highway.

*

No one was there when they reached Ben’s old house, and they sat in the driveway while Richie texted Ben.

“This is what happens when you insist on being early to everything,” he mumbled. “Ben says they’ll be here in _three hours_.”

“No spare key anywhere? What the fuck,” Eddie flopped back in his seat. The windows were already fogging up, and he fought off the desire to draw something in the condensation. Richie was typing furiously with his thumbs, hunched over in the driver’s seat, and Eddie glared out the window and tried to decide what to do that wasn’t breaking into the house or sitting on the porch for three hours.

“No spare key,” Richie confirmed. “I mean, it’s Derry. I wouldn’t have one hanging around either.”

“Let’s go for a walk,” Eddie said suddenly. The car had started off pleasantly warm in Bangor but he was quickly overheated, and he was restless. The last time he had been in Derry, he’d felt as energetic as a child again, not jittery and overcaffeinated but like he had ants in his pants, as Richie’s mother had sometimes said. He thought then that it was fear and whatever magic they were running on, but he felt it now too. He needed to move.

“Yeah?” Richie asked.

“Yeah,” Eddie said firmly. “My ass is numb. I need to walk.”

“I—” Richie began.

“No,” Eddie said. “You can make my ass less numb later.”

“Oh,” Richie said. “I’m going to.”

Eddie hid his smile as he retrieved his boots from the back seat. In New York, it wasn’t that cold, but damp. Derry was frigid cold, the kind of cold where taking a deep breath hurt and your eyelashes and the inside of your nose froze. Richie, typically, had only brought his leather jacket, but Eddie had packed a lined sweatshirt in his bag and tossed it and a scarf and a pair of gloves to Richie, who gave him a weird little shy grin. He liked it when Eddie thought of him like that, but he never asked for it. The first time Richie had stayed the weekend with him on purpose, rather than on impulse, he had gone shopping beforehand and stocked up on some Richie supplies. _Why did you get Doritos?_ Richie had asked, holding up a bag of Cool Ranch. _Because you like them_ , he had said, and Richie was quiet—for Richie—the rest of the evening, watching a true crime documentary with his head in Eddie’s lap and occasionally making fun of the reenactment actors’ hair. Being cared for unsettled him in a way that seemed to make him nervous but happy, and so Eddie did it whenever he could convince himself he wasn’t being his mother.

And he wasn’t, he thought as he looped his arm through Richie’s. That was something the last couple of years had taught him—lessons he had known when they were children but had to relearn as an adult, when he accepted that his love didn’t demand anything of Richie other than that he be himself and let Eddie do the same. He still had a hard time showing Richie the enormity of how he felt, but he got there sometimes, and he got the sense that Richie understood there was more underneath, if not exactly how much.

The Barrens were half a mile away from Ben’s old place, and the winter field further northwest. They vetoed going through the Barrens, not wanting to disturb whatever Ben had going on there, and headed through the path the kids had always taken to the field. It was still there, if somewhat less woodsy than he remembered, and beyond it was the old field, stark and bare in the gray afternoon light. No one had built on it, or removed the thatch of trees on the far side of it where they had all used to play hide and seek. Eddie nodded and headed toward it, possessed by the sudden desire to get his footprints all over the untouched snow.

“Oh, we’re doing this?” Richie asked breathlessly.

“Yeah, we have like two and a half hours to kill,” Eddie said. “Besides, I want to see if my Lego stash is still up in that one tree.”

He couldn’t remember why he had hidden his Legos from his mother. She didn’t care for any toy that took him outside, but she was fine with building blocks and Legos and coloring books, things that kept him in his room. He thought it probably had something to do with Richie, who tended to make every toy an outside toy.

“Mine were up there too,” Richie said, following him into the field. “We were gonna build the ultimate destroyer and test it in the lake, remember?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Eddie said. “Fuck, and then Bowers and his band of chucklefucks started smoking out there and we couldn’t go back and get them. I couldn’t remember what happened.”

There was a layer of powder atop a thicker layer of crunchier ice-snow over the field, which held up under them for the most part, although occasionally they would step through it and go up to their knees in the snow underneath and have to be pulled out, laughing. Eddie was sweating by the time they had gone halfway across, and Richie’s face was pink with exertion and cold.

“Great fucking idea, man, all this trip needed was snow crammed into my ankles and a heart attack,” he said after he’d fallen through again.

“It’s pretty out here though,” Eddie said. “It’s so quiet.”

That was the thing he had wanted to capture again without realizing it, the strange quiet of a field in winter. There was an insulated quality to it, even as it seemed so flat and open that you might not see another person ever again. Eddie could be alone here, in the winter. It was frightening in a way, especially when the sun started to go down, but the clown had never found him there. He thought maybe it was because there was an exhilaration too in the freedom of the lonely open cold space. At age ten, the concept of the sublime was unknown to him, but if someone had explained it he would have understood. He would feel the wind whip into his open mouth and his fragile lungs and be thrilled just to be a small boy confronted with the bigness of the world, catching a glimpse of an adventure he would one day be allowed to take on his own.

“The echoes are great out here when it’s not windy,” Richie said, and suddenly barked like a dog, waiting for it to bounce back to them. When it did he gave Eddie a bright smile, his nose scrunching up a little the way it did when he was really delighted by something.

They finally reached the tree line and climbed up into the little copse, panting. Eddie couldn’t remember which tree had secreted his treasures, and didn’t think he really wanted to climb any of them, but there was something nice about being there in the hush of the pine trees anyway. One thick felled tree butted up against three still standing, like a bench, and he dusted it off and sat down, patting the area beside him so Richie would join him. The wood was cold through the seat of his jeans and he knew he couldn’t sit there long because he kept thinking about hemorrhoids even though he tried very hard not to, but he wanted a moment in one of the only safe places he could remember in Derry.

“I guess I’m not that mad at Ben anymore,” he admitted. “I forgot about this place, how much fun we had out here.”

“I stopped being mad kind of immediately,” Richie said, scooting closer to him so they could lean against each other. “I do want something that didn’t get shit on by the clown or by…I don’t know, by being so fucking sad that I forgot you. I built Derry up as this place I could never go back to, but it’s a part of me and I don’t want to forget it again, or push it away. It formed me as a human being. Whatever the fuck that means.”

“Fuck that,” Eddie said, waving his hand. “Derry didn’t make me. The Losers made me.”

Richie’s eyebrows drew together, and he shook his head almost imperceptibly. “ _You_ made you,” he said.

Eddie couldn’t speak for a moment, and inched even closer to rest his head on Richie’s shoulder, closing his eyes while he waited for the heavy tide of love to recede just a little. When he could breathe properly again, he lifted his head and put his hand on Richie’s knee, waiting for Richie to tug off his glove and slide their cold fingers together. Richie did what he always did when he held Eddie’s hand and rubbed his thumb over Eddie’s, back and forth. It was one of his favorite things about Richie.

“Would you marry me?” he asked. It was quiet because the world around them was quiet, but even the echoey hush of snow was secondary to the way everything always faded away, unimportant, when they were together. 

“You want to hitch your wagon to this horse?” Richie asked. He was quiet too, almost muted, but he was unable to completely tamp down the happiness that swept over his face. “It’s pretty fucking decrepit.”

“Looks sturdy to me,” Eddie said. “What do you think? You want to put on a tux and kiss me in front of our friends?”

Richie gave him a slow, thoughtful look, the side of his mouth just barely turned up in a smile. “Would you marry me wearing what I’ve got on right now?”

“Yes,” Eddie said instantly, and then looked down, remembering what Richie was wearing. “Oh my god.”

“Yeah,” Richie said, grinning. “But it’s sweet that you said yes.” 

“Fuck you, I rescind my proposal. How are your clothes all so expensive when they look like that?” he asked.

“No, it’s too late. I’ll tell all the papers I’ve been jilted and you’ll have to pay back the dowry,” Richie said, bringing Eddie’s hand up to his mouth to kiss the back of it. “Yes. Of course I’ll marry you.”

“Good,” Eddie said, and leaned against his shoulder again. “Not in Derry, though. This is the last fucking time.”

“You know we’ll just wake up one day and decide today’s the day, and get to City Hall twenty minutes before it closes,” Richie said. “You in your nice suit. Me in my pajamas.”

“I’ll still do it even if you’re in your pajamas,” Eddie said. “Even if you’re in those fucking nasty shower shoes and that tank top that I still don’t understand.”

“It’s gonna be beautiful, Eds,” Richie said, and they sat in the quiet for a long time.

*

“Okay, if he doesn’t get the fuck out of there soon, we’re going to get bumped to the back of the line and have to come back on Monday and none of you will be here,” Eddie said.

“We have twenty minutes,” Mike said, rubbing his shoulder. “Ben is holding your place.”

“Ben is a fucking cream puff,” Eddie exclaimed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Tell me Bev is out there with him.”

“Bev is out there with him.” Mike said. “Eddie. It’s going to be fine.”

Eddie took a shuddering breath, then another, and another. “Yeah,” he said, and then the anxiety started to ratchet right back up again when he saw the clock. “Rich, if you don’t get the fuck out here I’m dragging you in front of the clerk in your underwear.”

The bathroom door opened a crack, and Richie’s head popped out. At least he was well groomed from the neck up, Eddie thought, and wanted to kiss him.

“I mean,” Richie said. “I’m basically there already.”

Eddie knew what was coming before he even opened the door. It was written all over Richie’s face, which was full of a specific kind of beaming glee, the kind that said he was going to fuck with Eddie even if it killed him.

Eddie’s shorts, which hit him at mid-thigh, were considerably higher on Richie’s legs, and they clung to him in ways that Eddie probably would have found very interesting were they not—he checked the clock—eighteen minutes away from getting married, if the line didn’t move any faster or slower. Richie’s tank top, which he had bought during a weekend in Las Vegas, read, “Don’t mess with CAPRICORNS who drink tequila and love IRON MAIDEN and CORGIS. I’m DIFFICULT TO KNOW and IMPOSSIBLE TO FORGET.” Eddie did not hate the tank top, but he regarded it as a possible source of danger, and whenever it showed up in the laundry he looked at it darkly and wondered what the fuck had happened there. The outfit was completed, of course, by Richie’s shower shoes, which he liked to say were just shoes, although they _were not_.

Eddie stared at him for fifteen seconds without moving. Mike moved toward Richie, to protect him or use him as a shield, Eddie wasn’t sure.

“I said I would still marry you if you wore that,” he said.

“ _Yeah_ you did,” Richie said, so pleased with himself that he was practically stretching to pat himself on the back.

“But I did not say I would take pictures with you.” Eddie watched Richie’s face turn suddenly innocent and hurt.

“Eds,” he began.

“I’m taking all my pictures with Mike,” Eddie said. “Everyone will think he’s my husband. You will have no visual reminder of this day at all. Instagram will know _nothing_.”

“ _Eddie_ ,” Richie said.

“I won’t tell anyone at work,” he said. “I’ll call corporate to put you on my insurance so even HR won’t know.”

“Damn, Eds _,_ ” Richie said. “That’s some scorched earth shit.”

He was trying to look wounded, but kept smiling instead on the way back into the bathroom. He emerged five minutes later in nice pressed gray trousers the same color as Eddie’s suit and a lighter gray button up underneath a blue sweater that Eddie had never seen before and instantly decided would belong to him forever after this day.

“I need Instagram to know,” he said. “Cruel of you to try to deprive the world.”

“You don’t have a better self, so I had to appeal to your need for external validation,” Eddie said. Richie stumbled forward a little to take his hand, and he smiled up at him. “You look so nice.”

“So do you,” Richie said. “Did Bev tailor this? It’s like painted on you.”

He nodded, already tilting his head up to be kissed, but Mike cleared his throat. “Eight minutes.”

Richie turned to Mike and made a weird jerking movement with his shoulder that almost seemed like a question. Mike twirled his fingers toward Richie’s pocket and Eddie looked back and forth between the two of them suspiciously.

“Eds,” Richie said. He reached for his pocket and pulled out the little box that housed the cheap temporary rings they had bought four days before, when they realized all the Losers would be in New York over the weekend for Bev’s show and that it would be a perfect time to get married.

“Did you lose the rings?” he asked. “What the fuck is happening?”

“No, I…” Richie shook his head. “When we were still in Derry, I went back out to the field and I, um. I cut some of the wood from the tree where you asked me to marry you, and I got Ben to help me make it into a couple of rings. That’s why I got here so late. Bev didn’t need to fix my sweater. Well, she did, but we did that yesterday.”

“You _what_?” Eddie whispered, but Ben was waving at them. _Go time_ , Eddie thought dazedly, and listened to the click of his own shoes as they walked hand in hand down the hall toward the West Chapel of the City Clerk’s Office.

It was a far cry from his first wedding, which took eighteen months to plan and was still not quite as perfect as Myra’s mother wanted it to be. She complained about the fit of Myra’s dress, the minute crack in the fondant on one of the cake tiers, the way the DJ had pronounced her name when they were introduced at the reception, the substandard water glasses. The battles over payment for various wedding services lasted months, and it had still come up during the last holiday he had spent with them, Christmas of 2015, a full six years after the wedding. “She just likes things the way she likes them,” Myra had said apologetically a hundred times, and Eddie, who was just grateful his own mother wasn’t there to put her stamp on his wedding plans, told her not to worry about it. 

He remembered feeling, as he walked down the aisle, that he would very much like to turn at the altar, continue walking, and then keep walking until he was somewhere in Idaho. He had wondered, deep down, if he would feel the same twinge of horror and misery, even just as a throw-back, but instead, as Richie set the rings down on the pedestal and the officiant motioned for the two of them to face each other and hold hands, he felt total calm. _Reach for the quiet inside you_ , he thought, but he didn’t have to reach for it. His mind was already quiet. He knew exactly what he wanted.

The officiant, an older woman named Barbara with a magenta bob, had to stand on a little step stool to bring her high enough to rest her elbows on the pedestal. She had already performed four weddings that morning, she had told Eddie while he was filling out the paperwork, but she enjoyed every single one.

“We are here,” she said, “to witness the marriage between Edward Francis Kaspbrak and Richard Wentworth Tozier. If there’s anybody present that knows any legal reason why this couple should not be married, please speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Eddie narrowed his eyes at Richie, who pressed his lips together tight.

“Do you, Richard, solemnly declare that you take Edward to be your lawfully wedded husband?” Barbara asked.

“I do,” he said fast, his voice shaking.

“Do you promise to love, honor, and cherish him, for as long as you both shall live?”

“I do.” 

“As a symbol of your promise, please place the ring on his finger,” Barbara said, gesturing toward the rings theatrically, and Eddie jumped as Richie slid the ring onto him. It was smooth and dark, and Eddie was so overwhelmed by the ring itself that he felt a bright, strange urge to stop the wedding and ask Richie what the fuck, _how_ had he done this beautiful thing?

“Do you, Edward, solemnly declare that you take Richard to be your lawfully wedded husband?” Barbara asked, a little more forcefully, like she thought Eddie was a flight risk.

“I do,” he said.

“Do you promise to love, honor, and cherish him, for as long as you both shall live?”

And he had said it before. _Yes_ , he had said once, _I will do that_ , and he had meant it with as much of him as he had available at the time. “I do,” he said, and meant it with everything. He slid the ring onto Richie’s finger with great concentration.

“Inasmuch as you both have consented to be united in the bonds of matrimony, and have exchanged your wedding vows in front of us all here today, then by the power vested in me by the laws of the state of New York, I now pronounce you husband and husband,” Barbara said.

“Fuck yes,” Richie said fervently, leaning forward even before Barbara added that they could kiss each other.

He dimly heard the other Losers clapping and whistling, but Richie’s hand had slid to the back of his neck and he was kissing him as slow and painfully sweet as if they were alone. They swayed together for a moment before Eddie pulled back and the two of them opened up the embrace to Bev and Bill and Ben and Mike, the six of them huddling together so hard they bumped into the pedestal and knocked Barbara’s notes onto the floor.

"They weren't lying, that took ninety seconds," Eddie said.

“You’re married,” Bill said, his face scrunched into a grimace of laughing disbelief.

“I’m _married_ ,” Richie said, and suddenly his eyebrows shot up.

“Go, everybody get out of the way,” Eddie said, and let Richie go so he could dash for the bathroom.

“There he goes,” Ben said. “Not that we put money on it, but we were kind of betting on when he would throw up.”

“Oh, he did it this morning as soon as we woke up,” Eddie said. “Who had that bet?”

“Steve,” Bev said.

“Well, Steve’s way better acquainted with his puking habits than we are,” Eddie said. “He survived Richie’s vodka year.” 

“Is he going to stay in there?” Barbara asked. “Not to rush you, but the next wedding has twenty people in their party.”

“ _How_?” Eddie asked, and let Barbara politely shove them out of the chapel.

*

Many restaurants had been floated for the wedding lunch, with Richie and Bill and Bev prepared to call in favors, but finally Eddie had said, “Why don’t we just have it at the place where we got that first meal, the steak and potatoes and apple pie?”

“The first meal after we—” Richie said, and turned red, which was so strange that Eddie teased him until he sputtered out laughter and covered his face with his hands. 

The place was called Fitzroy’s, and they did not take reservations no matter how many times Eddie asked, but they had plenty of outside seating and it was sunny and warm for late October. After they had ordered and the drinks had been served, Bill tapped his fork on the side of his beer bottle. Eddie glared at him.

“You’re supposed to kiss,” he said.

“I know,” Eddie said. “I hate that tradition. But I guess…I do want to say something.”

“You do?” Richie asked. “Am I gonna get roasted at my own wedding?”

“Not…not really,” Eddie said. He took a deep breath, staring intently at his water glass. “Um. You guys know what my first marriage was like. It sucked. I was living a half-life, like all of us were. I wanted it that way. I wanted to be safe. Everybody always used to ask me what I wanted, and I didn’t know. I never knew what the fuck I really wanted. Best to just let other people decide. Then I saw you guys again, and I remembered. I remembered how to be loved, and how to love people. How to love you. I love you so much, Rich. I know what I want now, and it’s you, forever.”

He sat back and took a sip of water, ducking his head. Ben tapped his fork on the side of his glass and the others followed, and he rolled his eyes and turned to Richie, finally, to kiss him. Richie was staring at him like he had when Eddie had woken him up from the deadlights, stunned and vulnerable. He pressed his lips together tight the way he had during the ceremony, his eyes brimming over behind his glasses.

Eddie cupped the side of his face and stroked a thumb over his cheek. “Do you want to say anything?” he murmured.

Richie shook his head jerkily and leaned in to hug him. He hated crying in public so much he wouldn’t even see sad movies in the theater, so Eddie wasn’t that surprised when Richie buried his face in his neck and choked out, “You asshole. That was beautiful, you fucking dick.”

“You beeped him without even having to beep,” Bev said, and Eddie grinned at her over Richie’s shoulder but held him tight, rubbing his thumb over the smooth wood of his ring.

*

That night he dreamed of Stan. He had hoped he would; sometimes he didn’t see him for months at a time now, but he knew Stan was there whenever anything happened, whether he saw him afterward or not.

“Were you there?” he asked anyway.

“Of course I was,” Stan said.

They were in the Urises’ living room. Eddie had only dreamed of them there a couple of times, and Stan was always distant and even quieter in his own home. He smiled at Eddie in the blue-gray light and took Eddie’s hand. In the dreams, Eddie always wore a wedding ring. He was still in the clothes he had worn into the sewers, so it only made sense. But the wedding ring in his dreams had never been the gold one he kept on his finger until he and Myra were legally separated. In the dreams, the ring on his finger was dark and smooth. Wood.

“I think you knew,” Stan said, tapping the ring with his own cold, wet finger. “Even before you died.”

“I knew that there had been something missing, and as soon as I saw him it wasn’t missing anymore,” Eddie said.

“Mike thinks it was magic that brought us all together,” Stan said. “But it’s magic that kept us apart. We were supposed to be together. It had to rip us into pieces to keep us from each other.”

When Eddie woke, the dream fading fast, he turned over to curl up behind Richie, sliding his left hand into Richie’s left hand and feeling the rings click against each other. He had heard it before, that click, the sound of something coming together as it was supposed to be, and when he fell asleep again he dreamed that the felled tree he and Richie had sat on was the shell of an enormous turtle, ancient and kind.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found [here](https://pineapplecrushface.tumblr.com/) on tumblr and [here](https://twitter.com/fruitcrushface) on twitter.


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